Can mobile applications for tracing people in contact with a Covid-19 case really work across borders? That was what had to be verified by the European Commission on Monday 14 September during the test of its interoperability gateway service, which links national applications based on a decentralised model (which excludes the French StopCovid application).
Six national applications participated in this first test, developed respectively in the Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, Ireland, Italy and Latvia.
A system operational in October
The establishment of the interoperability gateway by the Commission follows the agreement of the Member States on the technical specifications (see EUROPE 12507/14). It is developed and implemented by T-Systems and SAP and will be operated from the Commission's data centre in Luxembourg. The European Commission states that the gateway will start to operate effectively from October onwards, and will operate in compliance with privacy rules (it will not be possible to identify natural persons, information will be exchanged in a pseudonymised format, will be encrypted, limited to the minimum required and kept only as long as necessary to ensure that infections can be traced).
Deployment in the EU
Currently, 14 Member States offer mobile applications for tracing close contact and alerting, 13 of them in decentralised format (AT, IT, LV, DE, PL, DK, IE, HR, ES, NL, FI, PT, EE) and one in a centralised format (FR). Five Member States are planning to introduce one (BE, LT, MT, CY, CZ). By contrast, Romania, Luxembourg and Sweden have already indicated that they do not intend to use such a system.
The success of these type of applications in “breaking the chains of transmission” depends on widespread use of these devices by the population, the Health Commissioner said. However, they are only moderately successful, such as the French StopCovid application, which in early summer was only being used by 2% of the population.
Some, like German MEP Andreas Schwab (EPP), are also critical of the non-participation of some countries, such as Switzerland. Asked about this, the Commission pointed out that only a country in the EU or the European Economic Area (EEA) could participate in the gateway, which was not the case for Switzerland, and that if a third country was to be associated, it would have to be on the basis of “some sort of bilateral agreement”. (Original version in French by Sophie Petitjean)